Kids are creating multiple MySpace profiles for friends and other ones for their “real” friends

Google Profiles, Sidewiki, Wave are part of a stealth social network. It’s not a destination. It’s a zen attack.

Corporate sites should be the hub of a robust Web strategy that goes to where the conversations are outside .com.

Develop active listening program AND THEN empower a customer advocacy program to tell your story, defend you, etc

PR is curating disparate SM monitoring databases that should be connected to corporate CRM for customer support

Five years from now URLs won’t matter. Information will come together in a new way we can’t yet fathom. -@jowyang

Entire crowd is focused/stuck on SM ROI, and you can sense the aggregate frustration at the implicit vagaries.

I want to touch on that last tweet. In Jeremiah Owyang‘s “The Future of Social Media and Business” presentation (great breakdown here), the audience asked many questions about legal, ROI, lead-generation and the culture of fear that surrounds investing in new technologies and strategies without a guaranteed pay-off. Mr. Owyang didn’t have answers beyond his analysis, partly because the answers people were seeking aren’t easily answered in a large forum. The future of social media, by its very nature, will not and does not mirror traditional advertising strategies nor the metrics that fuel them.

Companies who today are seen as innovators in the social media space — whether it’s micro-media customer support, humanistic corporate blogs or social network engagement — didn’t get where they are by betting on a sure thing. Social media has changed the game. Even if Nielsen says X millions watched a primetime show last night, we know a key percentage had a laptop open at the same time. And although I can back up that assertion by pointing to the top Twitter trends on any given evening, most companies cannot quantify that “buzz” directly into sales to the point they can justify a spend with guaranteed results.

Rather, an online conversation is just as valuable — possibly more valuable — than a point of sale impulse display or a print and broadcast advertising buy with guaranteed impressions. The reason Mr. Owyang couldn’t give us the 1-2-punch for selling in social media is that 1) it doesn’t exist, and 2) even if it did, it would change tomorrow.

What can we do in the interim?

Innovate

Set measurable objectives

Benchmark

Evaluate and adjust

We must change this perception of fear into a lens of opportunity. The control isn’t coming back, and neither is the sure thing.

BlogWorld has me pumped and even more passionate about the possibilities. I’m not waiting around for the sure thing; are you?